Akrotiri, the Minoan “Pompeii” - buried by the eruption of Thera (twice the size of Krakatoa!)

reply to post by kiwifoot


Very nice op.
I haven't read the thread yet, but I'm sure it's been mentioned,
The link between the exodus and an eruption at Thera , Graham Philips weaves a credible theory together with a lot of research in his book Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt, a synopsis which of which you can read at his site here

After my recent interview on Coast to Coast on December 22, I have been inundated with requests to know more about my ideas concerning the biblical ten plagues of Egypt. According to the Old Testament account in the book of Exodus, when the pharaoh refused Moses’ demands to let the Israelite slaves leave Egypt, God inflicted the Egyptians with a series of what the Bible calls plagues, which included darkness over the land, the Nile turning to blood, fiery hail storms, cattle deaths and a plague of boils. In my book Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt I suggest that these events may have been the result of a natural catastrophe - a gigantic volcanic eruption on a Mediterranean island which also destroyed a civilization and gave rise to the legend of Atlantis. I have included here a brief outline of the relevant section of my book.

the coast to coast interview

Another interesting read on the net re this theory can be found here riaanbooysen.com...

Thera and the Exodus
Many scholars have realized that the plagues of Egypt must have been caused by an eruption of the Aegean volcano Thera, today called Santorini. A particularly accurate description of the aftereffects of a volcanic eruption in this context is presented by Graham Phillips in his book Act of God, later reprinted under the title Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt. More significantly, though, Phillips seems to be the only person to have identified the biblical Moses as Prince Tuthmosis, the first-born of Amenhotep III of Egypt. He presents convincing evidence that the circumstances surrounding Prince Tuthmosis closely match those of Moses. Prince Tuthmosis mysteriously disappeared from record shortly before the religious revolution of Egypt's sun king Akhenaten.
Excerpts of additional proof of his postulation are presented below, together with a hypothesis of the actual events that followed the eruption of Thera.
Possibly the most significant of all the ancient descriptions of the eruption of Thera is again to be found in the Koran [XXIX, 39-40, Ali]: "(Remember also) Qarun, Pharaoh and Haman: there came to them Moses with clear signs, but they behaved with insolence on the earth; yet they could not overreach (Us). Each one of them we seized for his crime: of them, against some we sent a violent tornado (with showers of stones); some we caught by a (mighty) blast; some we caused the earth to swallow up; and some we drowned (in the waters): it was not Allah who injured (and oppressed) them: they injured (and oppressed) their own souls." From these descriptions it is clear that the first 'plague' to hit the Egyptians was a flood, which drowned a significant number of them. This 'flood' could only have been the tsunami caused by the eruption of Thera (the mighty blast), and it would have been this 'wall of water' which collapsed onto and washed away the chariots of the Pharaoh.

Also I think Otto Muck might have drawn a link to a Thera eruption as a result of comet strike on earth ,in his book Search for Atlantis,long time since I read it ,might have been to do with the biblical flood , I can't quite remember.
Both of these books are GREAT reads if you enjoy the ancient mysteries as I do, highly recommend them, especially Otto's, he does some amazing research and linking in of various historical themes,astounding really!
I look forward to reading this thread in the morning.

wow...this is a fantastic read,they looked like they lived like we do know..i just wish the schools that my children go to ,actually taught them things like this,as i feel a lot more would be discovered......

I have often wondered what may lie hidden and well preserved in the ash beds that covered 2/3 of what is now the US (from previous eruptions of Yellowstone).

Nice OP. Well constructed.
S&F.

This eruption must have had a massive impact on early Mediterranean civilizations. The Nile delta would have been pounded by waves, with a clear path going right to the delta. I am surprised that a great more study has not been done on the impact of a possible massive volcano in this region at this time on the early development of civilization.

The size and force of the eruption was considerable enough to completely blow away half of the island.

The Caldera was formed from where the missing half once was and makes for some dramatic scenery.

The exposed strata now left is a very useful indicator of the geological history of the island and is colourful with it's reds blacks and whites.

These are my memories of my time there and I would recommend a visit to anyone who has the slightest notion to go but would suggest not going in high summer as it can be very uncomfortable in the heat.

Purely a personal opinion here is as interesting as Akrotiri is I prefered Pompei and Herculaneam, (Ecolano), there was more to see and I think another eruption of Vesuvious is more likely then another at Santorini so Pompei and Ecolano will be lost again which is a shame because they are only partially excavated as the surrounding towns are built on the rest of the sites, still perhaps it will be an adventure for far distant generations.

I just want to say thanks to everyone for the appreciation of the thread!

I just like Ancient Civilisation Threads and love to share interesting histories, the less famous the better as the common examples have usually been flogged to death.

I'm glad people enjoyed this, the Stars and flags are a "bonus"!

All the best, KF!

Another very well explained and constructed thread. Good work Kiwifoot!

I never had seen pictures from the dig sites and never knew their town were so big.

Again, thanks for bringing this to us. Star and flag!

Originally posted by asIam

The link between the exodus and an eruption at Thera , Graham Philips weaves a credible theory together with a lot of research in his book Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt, a synopsis which of which you can read at his site here

Thera and the Exodus
Many scholars have realized that the plagues of Egypt must have been caused by an eruption of the Aegean volcano Thera, today called Santorini. A particularly accurate description of the aftereffects of a volcanic eruption in this context is presented by Graham Phillips in his book Act of God, later reprinted under the title Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt. More significantly, though, Phillips seems to be the only person to have identified the biblical Moses as Prince Tuthmosis, the first-born of Amenhotep III of Egypt. He presents convincing evidence that the circumstances surrounding Prince Tuthmosis closely match those of Moses. Prince Tuthmosis mysteriously disappeared from record shortly before the religious revolution of Egypt's sun king Akhenaten.

Quite likely not to be the case.

The Thera eruption was convincingly dated to just before 1600 BC several years ago.
On the other hand, with Amenhotep III, while the timeframe of his reign is somewhat debatable, everybody that knows anything about him believes he reigned sometime in the 1300's (BC.)

In fact, even Amenhotep I came too late for the Thera eruption. He reigned in Egypt in the late 1500's (BC.)

Originally posted by poet1b

This eruption must have had a massive impact on early Mediterranean civilizations. The Nile delta would have been pounded by waves, with a clear path going right to the delta. I am surprised that a great more study has not been done on the impact of a possible massive volcano in this region at this time on the early development of civilization.

The "clear path" is effectively blocked by Crete.

No, not a "direct hit.


Harte

[edit on 3/1/2010 by Harte]

Incredible thread Kiwi, beautifully laid out and well-written!

Those scenes of domestic life in this ancient city appear downright idyllic - at least right up to the moment they were wiped out by the volcano...

I wonder if this could correlate to my thread here www.abovetopsecret.com...

This thread talks about how 5,126 years before 2,012 which is the length of the mayan calendar is the beginning of the Minoan civilization. I wonder if our two threads could have anything in common, i.e. relations to the Mayan Calendar.

Either way S/F

[edit on 3/1/10 by Misoir]

reply to post by Harte


Not according to the map I am looking at. The gap between the islands leads straight to the Nile Delta. The wave would have went between Crete and Kassos straight to the Nile Delta.

maps.google.com...:en-USfficial&hl=en&tab=wl

edit to add

Well, the link doesn't exactly work, but you can look it up yourself.



[edit on 1-3-2010 by poet1b]

Very informative thread.
Star and Flag!

www.wsu.edu:8080...

For some reason the Myceneans abandoned their civilization between 1200 and 1100 BC. The populations of their once-mighty cities dwindled rapidly until there was no urbanized culture left on the Greek mainland. Most of the cities were eventually destroyed, and all the great craftsmen of the Mycenean cities faded away when society could no longer support them. How much of their culture they abandoned, we don't know. For the one key element of their culture that they did abandon was writing , and we don't know why. Without writing, they left us no history following the collapse of Mycenean civilization; we have, instead, only five centuries of mystery: the Greek Dark Ages. Also called, the Greek Middle Ages, this period may have been precipitated by migrations and invasions of a people speaking a dialect of Greek, the Dorians. Later Greeks believed this to be the case: in Greek history and legend, the Dorians were a barbaric northern tribe of Greeks who rushed down into Greece and wrested control over the area.

www.thefreelibrary.com...

Santorini volcanic ash found in Egypt.

Today towns of brilliantly white houses cling to the tranquil but steep cliffs of the partially collapsed volcano called Santorini in the southern Aegean Sea of Greece. But 3,500 years ago the volcano raged with a fury at least comparable to the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, whose blast was heard 1,500 kilometers away and whose ash cloud extended 50 km into the sky. Santorini's massive eruption may have given rise to the Atlantis legend and is thought to have destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete, 120 km to the south.

In spite of the 13 to 18 cubic km of material ejected by Santorini, until recently no traces of the ash had been found on land south of Crete. Last week, however, at the Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (or GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. The society was founded in New York in 1888 by James Hall, James D.
meeting in Orlando, Fla., two researchers reported the southernmost find of Santorini volcanic ash grains--microscopic glass shards--along Egypt's northern coast, 800 km southeast of Santorini.

I think they found Santorini volcanic ash as far as the North Pole, but I am not sure if it was from 1600 B.C. or from a much older chronology, because I am sure the Santorini volcano didn't just erupt once with such great force.
What if we haven't found evidence yet of another older eruption at what I suspect roughly between 5.000 to 6.000 BC where another mysterious dark period of the civilization occurs. In case this was event that buried the Aegean valley (It used to be a valley before being a a sea) or the great destruction that Plato talked to us about the lost Mythical Atlantis, it remains to be seen. This if true would suggest that there might be at least another 50% of undiscovered antiquity from much older eras. (Hopefully if Jacques Yves Cousteau haven't stolen everything)

www.guardian.co.uk...
Probably oldest sunken settlement discovered.

Explored by an Anglo-Greek team of archaeologists and marine geologists and known as Pavlopetri, the sunken settlement dates back some 5,000 years to the time of Homer's heroes and in terms of size and wealth of detail is unprecedented, experts say.

"There is now no doubt that this is the oldest submerged town in the world," said Dr Jon Henderson, associate professor of underwater archaeology at the University of Nottingham. "It has remains dating from 2800 to 1200 BC, long before the glory days of classical Greece. There are older sunken sites in the world but none can be considered to be planned towns such as this, which is why it is unique."

I would go as far to suggest that maybe the whole southern Balkan peninsula became totally uninhabited and suffered a change of morphology many times while human civilization was present on this planet. It seems the local population expanded and contracted many times around that area, or simply waves of them due to unforeseen circumstances kept leaving the place and most of them probably never returning back, if they found other hospitable areas at their quest for survival. The area probably used to have much greater populations than those initially thought. At least 1 hint that supports this is that archeological finds in Crete, mainly the numerous buildings with a possible use as military outposts suggest a much larger population of probably the size of 1 million people at least between 2000 BC and 1000 BC all that in the island of Crete alone.


Volcanoes can create much damage in an ecosystem even rendering an area uninhabited for a long time even creating local conditions that would resemble a mini nuclear winter and poisoning food and water resources through toxic fallout.
en.wikipedia.org...
Scroll to Volcanic Injection topic.

[edit on 1-3-2010 by spacebot]

For the time being I am trying to rediscover a photo of Jacques Cousteau holding a small statuette that resembled a person wearing some kind of backpack and a round helmet much like the modern divers, but this one according to the discoverer was 2 to 3.000 years old at least.
Of course it was never recovered from the claws of the famous exploring team.

[edit on 1-3-2010 by spacebot]

Once again a magnificent piece of work from the Kiwi!

Many thanks for bringing this to our attention, a flag for you sir and 3 stars (you DID make 3 consecutive posts in the opening, right? )

To answer some questions by previous posters:

First of all to Crito: Don't take it too literally when teh characterization of "Asians" comes into play. Back then (the 2nd millennium BC) people were on the move A LOT, so those that were "Asians" (in Asia Minor, which IS a part of Asia) around, say, 1800BC were Aegeans a century later (and some of them were Proto-Greeks perhaps a few decades later). If you follow the prevailing theory of human "expansion" on the Earth, we were all Asians at some point as it was the first "stop" out of Africa.

Next on, to m0r1arty: The name of Minos' son that got killed by the Marathon bull was Androgeos (Ανδρογέως in Greek, pronounced "Andhrogheos" where the "dh" and "gh" sound like "th" in "this" and "w" in "wood"). Another "version" of the myth has him killed by Aegeas, Theseus' father and then King of Athens, because he won every prize and contest in that fest - looks like Aegeas was a sore loser

To Sinter Klaas and enemyofman: According to the evidence at hand, estimates about the time of the last Thera eruption place it between 1450 BC and as back as 1750 BC (not sure if there's evidence for two separate eruptions, the last being by far the stronger), so 3600 years ago seems about right. Minoan Crete was at its peek at that time and after the eruption it declined pretty quickly, around 1200 BC the Aegean was effectively controlled by the Myceneans.

To butcherguy: Probably nothing, in terms of human involvement. The last eruption of Yellowstone is estimated as far back as 640,000 years ago (some geologists speculate it is long overdue for the next "show", let's hope it is NOT!). Back then not only there were no modern humans outside Africa, there were no modern humans to begin with (the oldest bone of modern humans we have, so far, is dated to almost 200,000 years ago).

To sherpa: The Thera eruption may well have been the biggest one to affect civilized humans, humans that survived it and advanced past it (the only sure fire records of it are indirect at best, like the obvious signs of an evacuation of Akrotiri before the big blast). Thera remains to this day the only volcanic caldera inhabited (the city of Santorini is built right on it, a magnificent view by the way!!) and one glance at a satellite photo of the island reveals the missing parts of it (and the magnitude of the eruption itself, if you imagine all that rock and earth being thrust a couple of miles up, not to mention the lava and ash being forced up from the mantle). If Mt. St Helen's was big, this was HUGE!

To Harte: There is a way for the tsunami to reach the north shore of Egypt, even if Crete is in the way (I must check a map and draw some straight lines to see if it really is so much "in the way", let's assume for now that it is). there are signs, not what one would call solid evidence but good circumstantial evidence at least, that the tsunami washed the whole of Crete from north to south (if you check a map of Crete, you will spot 2 or 3 obvious "passages", valleys that run from north to south, that could allow a decent size tsunami like this one to overcome the barrier that is Crete). Whether the tsunami would have enough "momentum" to reach Egypt AND create a flood or cause the Biblical "wounds" of Egypt is another matter though.

Ahhh..Once again Sir KiwiFoot you have brought us all another fine and well written post for all of us to feast our eyes and minds on! S&F for you my friend, wonderful job!

reply to post by kiwifoot

3,600 years ago! How incredible. That is about the same time as the Exodus, and also the supposed time of the passing of Nemesis, our twin star. The strong gravity influence would be shifting plates all over the world, and erupting many volcanoes. Just like the shifting that has started right now! Interesting...

The radiocarbon dating evidence:
digitalcommons.library.arizona.edu... n1_325_344_v.pdf (URL is too long for ATS, sorry)

We conclude that if the 14C evidence is considered in isolation, one would deduce that the eruption
of Thera took place sometime between 1663 and 1599 BC with 95% confidence.

I was a little surprised to find Egyptian dynasty dates were in such dispute, however:
www.informath.org...

Analyses of charcoal used in Old Kingdom
pyramid construction (HAAS et al. 1987;
BONANI et al. 2001; NAKHLA et al. 1999) produced
some radiocarbon determinations with dates centuries
earlier than conventional dates...

L. DEPUYDT (2000) has analyzed a
papyrus from the Abusir mortuary temple of the
Fifth Dynasty king Neferefre as containing a Sothic
date which would place his reign more than
half a century earlier than conventional dating
(KITCHEN 2000, 47–48).

..the results obtained
purportedly produce somewhat uniform ranges
of dates 100–120 years earlier than generally
accepted New Kingdom, Second Intermediate
Period and Middle Kingdom dates...

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by Harte

 

Not according to the map I am looking at. The gap between the islands leads straight to the Nile Delta. The wave would have went between Crete and Kassos straight to the Nile Delta.
Well, the link doesn't exactly work, but you can look it up yourself.

Yes, there exists a channel there.

Passage of a tsunami through that channel would reduce the energy of the wave to a large extent, assuming that the opening was actually there before the eruption (and wasn't actually carved out of a larger island by the wave itself.)

The subsequent wave (at the Nile delta) would be miniscule in comparison to the same wave if it had a straight shot with no interruptions.

Harte

Originally posted by Maegnas



To butcherguy: Probably nothing, in terms of human involvement. The last eruption of Yellowstone is estimated as far back as 640,000 years ago (some geologists speculate it is long overdue for the next "show", let's hope it is NOT!). Back then not only there were no modern humans outside Africa, there were no modern humans to begin with (the oldest bone of modern humans we have, so far, is dated to almost 200,000 years ago).

Yes, according to accepted theory.
However, there was a time when accepted theory said there were no signs of human habitation before 13,000 years ago.

Then they found some bones that changed accepted theory.

That's why I wonder what might be found under the ash beds.
It might just be something that changes the accepted theory again.

The last eruption of Yellowstone was actually approx 70,000 years (not full scale caldera explosion, but there was ash) ago. volcanoes.usgs.gov...
It is nice to see people reading a whole thread.

Edit to add: Sorry, the ash thing is a non sequitur, not enough ash in the last eruption to cover anything.

[edit on 2-3-2010 by butcherguy]

reply to post by butcherguy


Around 70.000 years ago Lake Toba errupted. Yellowstone is overdue.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
Very nice thread about it.(read all of it . )

Reply to post. Maegnas

To Sinter Klaas and enemyofman: According to the evidence at hand, estimates about the time of the last Thera eruption place it between 1450 BC and as back as 1750 BC (not sure if there's evidence for two separate eruptions, the last being by far the stronger), so 3600 years ago seems about right. Minoan Crete was at its peek at that time and after the eruption it declined pretty quickly, around 1200 BC the Aegean was effectively controlled by the Myceneans.

3600 years is a cycle of bad things happening. The Maya's are famous because of it.
The idea something big happened 3600 years before and the predictions for 2012.

Well.. I would like to get at least 60 you know.
Edit.
exquisite thread I love it

[edit on 2/3/10 by Sinter Klaas]

reply to post by Sinter Klaas
Thanks for the link.
I liked the 'read it all'.

I've read some of it, mostly the last hundred pages.
I wish I had heard about and joined ATS sooner, then I would have read it all, as it was written.



[edit on 2-3-2010 by butcherguy]